Signature of the N=126 shell closure in dwell times of alpha-particle tunneling

Abstract

Characteristic quantities such as the penetration and preformation probabilities, assault frequency and tunneling times in the tunneling description of alpha decay of heavy nuclei are explored to reveal their sensitivity to neutron numbers in the vicinity of the magic neutron number $N$ = 126. Using realistic nuclear potentials, the sensitivity of these quantities to the parameters of the theoretical approach is also tested. An investigation of the region from $N=116$ to $N=132$ in Po nuclei reveals that the tunneling $\alpha$ particle spends the least amount of time with an $N=126$ magic daughter nucleus. The shell closure at $N=126$ seems to affect the behaviour of the dwell times of the tunneling alpha particles and this occurs through the influence of the $Q$-values involved.

14 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (9)

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• $\alpha$ particle preformation in heavy nuclei and penetration probability
• Critical view of WKB decay widths
• Systematics of proton emission
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Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Manifestation of deformation and nonlocality in $\alpha$ and cluster decay
• Alpha decay of thermally excited nuclei
• Electric fields at finite temperature
• Temperature dependence of cluster decay